Judge Jeanine Pirro – Opening Statement – Attacks Mitt Romney for Hitting Donald Trump
Hat Tip: BB
Why Conservative Reagan Won Two Landslides, and Moderates Always Lose – Cruz vs. Rubio – THE “ELECTABILITY” DEBATE
By Shlomo Pollak
Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, right, speaks during a news conference with Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, following a vote in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Friday, Sept. 27, 2013. The U.S. Senate voted to finance the government through Nov. 15 after removing language to choke off funding for the health care law, putting pressure on the House to avoid a federal shutdown set to start Oct. 1. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The debate continues: do we stick to our principles, or do we run to the middle?
Since Romney’s shocking defeat, this debate has taken on a new sense of urgency, with the thinking that if Obama was reelected, even Hillary can win this thing?!?
Nobody changed teams, obviously…. The moderates remained moderates, and are “now more then ever”, energized to crush the right wing, that “cost us” an important election….
The conservatives, are equally incredulous, and fear a do-over with another moderate, will net us exactly the same results as last time….
THIS DEBATE ACTUALLY SEEMS TO BE, BETWEEN REASON AND HISTORY!!!
On the one hand, the moderates’ argument seems intuitively correct, and more reasonable. The closer one is to the middle, the more of the electorate he should be able to capture. In a two party system, there is nothing to the right of the GOP candidate, no matter how moderate he is…
But History seems to tell a different story. As Senator Cruz often reminds us, the last Republican to win a landslide, was actually painting IN BOLD COLORS- Reagan. Over and over we nominate a Bob Dole, a Mcain, a Romney, and over and over WE LOSE?!?!
FACTS DON’T LIE, YET IT SEEMS SO COUNTERINTUITIVE….
Many have gone the “energize the base” route, to explain this phenomenon. They claim that, staunch conservatives, not being COMPLETELY represented by the moderate GOP candidate, just stayed home!?!
Personally, after the 2012 debacle, that line of reasoning doesn’t hold water. Any voter that wasn’t 100% committed to stop Obama, with all the lawlessness, and wrong headedness, will certainly find a different excuse not to vote next time around…..
SO WHAT IS THE ANSWER??
My explanation is “THE GREAT BAIT & SWITCH”….
The media, Uber-leftist that they are, consistently root for, and aid, the candidate in any race, that is farther to the left. In the general election, they help the Democrat. In the GOP primary, they help the moderate. Jeb Bush with his embarrassing numbers, still gets more mentions, and is discussed more than Senator Ted Cruz. We consistently hear “here comes Governor Kasich”, as we didn’t stop hearing in 2012, to “watch Jon Huntsman”…
However, when a moderate secures the nomination, the media, IMMEDIATELY, switches sides!! Over night, the media turns from strong advocates for the moderate Republican, to fierce adversaries of the exact same candidate!!
In 2008, the media was falling all over themselves to support John McCain. Once he became the nominee, they we’re openly hostile. That very WEEK, The New York Times ran a full expose on some supposed scandal in the senators past….
The first thing Romney did as the fresh GOP nominee, was to go on that now infamous foreign trip. The Romney camp didn’t know what hit them!! All of a sudden, the drumbeat of media scorn, ridicule, and unfavorable coverage was pointed at THEIR direction. The strong headwind pointed at their opponents in the primary- that was wind in their back to win the nomination…reversed!! It was like someone simply turned around the media fan… Out of the blue, the Romney’s were facing fierce headwinds. THEY DID NOTHING.
Then came the biggest gift in the history of politics, and Romney squandered it! In a culmination of Obama’s many failings, a US ambassador, and three more Americans were killed in Benghazi….TWO MONTHS BEFORE THE ELECTION!! It was chock full with; enormous incompetence, reckless and naive policies, inexplicable chaos, and a transparent cover-up. The Romney camp waited for their chairleaders – the media, to spread the message……crickets. To their horror, the media switched teams, and were actively chairing-on Obama, reporting, and covering the movie….
Don’t worry, we were told, by the debate Romney will “nail Obama on Benghazi”…. How did that work out?! Obama simply said he had agreed all along it was a terrorist attack, the leftist moderator agreed, the media didn’t say a word about the inconsistency, so Romney moved on to “the economy”.
IF YOU LIVE BY THE MEDIA, YOU DIE BY THE MEDIA!!!
The 2008, and 2012 campaigns, of Mcain and Romney, are best remembered, as laid back, reactionary, on the defense, and not at all aggressive. The reason is simple. Their campaigns were BUILT in primaries that the wind / media, was in their back. Additionally, the candidates themselves, have never demonstrated the ability to aggressively, and effectively, go after the left. They never honed that skill, and were certainly not battle tested.
The media props up the moderate, enticing and BAITING conservatives to follow along, only to SWITCH away, and tear the GOP candidate to shreds.
We NEED a candidate AND a campaign that is built for the general!!
Which brings us to 2016, and Ted Cruz vs. Marco Rubio.
The difference in the two campaigns is as clear as day, and publicly reported.
Ted Cruz is tirelessly focusing on organizing and retail campaigning , with intensive mobilizing efforts. The man doesn’t sleep!! In the car, he can’t do a TV interview, so he schedules a radio show. He is building a network which one can build on, and only grows, and expands against Hillary.
Rubio has been relying on favorable news coverage and attention, most of which would virtualy disappear in the big fight.
Ted Cruz, as the the nominee, will be treated no different than he’s been, since he arrived on the scene. Cruz is already scorned, hated, lied about, discounted, and ignored. He is building a formidable campaign, DESPITE the media . The only small differences in the general will be; the media will be forced to ignore him less, and will choose to mock him more.
Twice recently, the Cruz team displayed the skills they have developed and honed over the years in pushing back. Mr. Trump quickly regretted referring to Cruz’s tenure in the senate as “like a maniac”. With humor, class, and talent, they displayed a deep connection with popular culture, turned “I am a maniac” into a source of pride, and even sold “I am a maniac” gear….
When the Cruz family shot a brilliant ad, parodying parents reading Holiday books to their little children, a partisan cartoonist for the Washington Post couldn’t stand that two million people viewed it on YouTube alone. She too surely regrets her cartoon, depicting the girls as monkeys. Her editor yanked the picture, and Cruz & Co. turned this incident into what is now being referred to as a gift!!… raising millions and generating plenty of positive news coverage…
Marco Rubio, on the other hand, is now framed as the sensible, electable, moderate. In a general election he would be caught totally flat-footed. Marco is being propped up, by leftists and moderates in the media, only to collapse like a house of cards, when his supporters begin fawning over Hillary.
For heaven’s sake!! Let’s not do the same thing over and over, and expect different results.
By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media
Salem radio commentator Hugh Hewitt has become a media darling for his “expert” opinions, as he lectures Republicans on how to handle not only the media but the issues. However, Hewitt is the same commentator who had flatly predicted a big Mitt Romney win. On October 22, 2012, Hewitt announced, “Romney’s momentum will continue unbroken, and his demeanor and especially his poise will be the takeaway for any undecideds that are left…Romney won the debates decisively, which means he will win on November 6. Some things are simple, and this is one of them.”
Hewitt, known as Hugh Blewit, failed to understand that President Obama had organized “the strongest grassroots organization in the history of American presidential politics,” in the words of Jeremy Bird, the National Field Director of Obama for America. This was a network comprised of more than two million volunteers, backed by neighborhood political teams and 2,700 field organizers. They carried the day.
We noted at the time that Republican strategist Karl Rove was raising $300 million for television ads depicting Republican candidate Mitt Romney as a would-be efficient manager of the U.S economy. Rove had advised Republicans not to call Obama a socialist, believing that undecided, moderate or left-leaning voters would jump to Obama’s side if that charge were leveled against him. This was a terrible miscalculation. It meant that a significant percentage of conservative voters didn’t think Romney was up to the task of identifying and rolling back Obama-style Marxism. They didn’t turn out for Romney. They also gave up on the Republican establishment, a continuing wave of outrage and discontent that accounts for outsiders moving to the top of the field of Republicans contending for the GOP 2016 presidential nomination.
But the establishment is back, in the form of such personalities as Karl Rove, a Fox News contributor, and Hugh Hewitt.
A moderator during the recent Republican debate broadcast by CNN, Hewitt engaged in back-and-forth with candidate Donald Trump over a Trump interview on Hewitt’s Salem network radio show. Trump complained that Hewitt was playing gotcha with trick questions about Arab personalities and names in the Middle East. Hewitt has made it clear he doesn’t like Trump’s style and approach.
Now that candidate Ben Carson is under fire by the media for offering his opinion that a Muslim who believes in Sharia should not be president, Hewitt has gone back on CNN to take issue with Carson and offer his advice. On Tuesday he told CNN’s Carol Costello that Carson is a rookie who has to work on getting his message right.
Confirming his role as a gatekeeper, Jim Geraghty of National Review says that Republican candidates are “attempting to showcase their interest in Hewitt’s priorities.” Similarly, Politico says Hewitt “has captured the ears of the GOP and earned the trust of virtually all of its biggest names.” But why? As proven by his faulty prediction in 2012, it seems he is too tied up in the establishment Republican Party view to understand the progressive wave that is not only still strong in the U.S., but around the world. Despite how things may look on the Democratic side right now, these forces are strong and believe that history is on their side.
In terms of their most recent gains, consider that the socialists have solidified their control of Greece, anti-American socialist Jeremy Corbyn has been elected the head of the Labor Party in Britain, and socialists seem poised to win the Canadian national elections on October 19. Even if the New Democratic Party (NDP) doesn’t win nationally, the left-wing party has already taken control of Alberta, the oil-rich and most conservative part of the country.
Here, avowed socialist Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is strongly challenging Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. He draws huge crowds—most of them young people—and attracts people in the New Age movement who believe in bizarre things like a federal Department of Peace. This may sound strange, but the movement has tens of millions of followers who forecast a new Aquarian Age, apparently to be led by Sanders and the leader of a new global religion.
Having misjudged one presidential contest, it would be nice if the public were reminded of the details surrounding Hewitt’s prediction of a Romney victory in 2012. His blog at the time had proclaimed, “Why Romney Wins: the Economy is Tanking.” It is easier to pontificate than actually examine what is happening out in the country, as I recently did when covering a Sanders for President rally. The surge for socialism is real and has taken hold among those being “educated” at our public universities. No wonder Sanders wants to give them free college, a maneuver that could guarantee the Democrats millions of votes.
In a 2012 column entitled “Mittmentum Builds,” Hewitt seemed to have New Age powers of clairvoyance, saying that “He who surges last surges best in a presidential campaign, and it appears that Romney has indeed caught the last big wave.” He said that an “amazing” Romney speech in Wisconsin “is the sort of performance that flows from a candidate who knows he is winning.”
Let’s remember that Republican Mitt Romney lost an easily winnable election. He got only 48 percent of the vote, just two points more than Senator John McCain’s (R-AZ) total in 2008.
Candidates get scorched for making perceived mistakes, in response to trick or gotcha questions, but commentators are rarely held accountable for their errors. Let’s take a look back at some other predictions from the 2012 election, as reflected in headlines or actual quotations:
Commentators get things wrong, and that doesn’t disqualify them from continuing to hold their jobs and make predictions. But getting a presidential contest wrong, without analyzing why it happened and whether the progressives are still outsmarting the Republicans, is a recipe for another disaster.
The headline over that October 22, 2012 Hugh Hewitt column was, “Romney Wins Again, And Left Gets It Wrong—Again.” The left was not only “right,” but is as strong as ever. Today, they have the pope on their side.
Republicans listen to and follow a Pied Piper like Hewitt at their own risk.
By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media
In a typically cynical article, “GOP presidential candidates have a new country to bash: the People’s Republic of China,” Politico complains about “China-bashing” by various Republican candidates. The story by Nahal Toosi carries the headline, “The Republicans’ Red Scare,” but only mentions one time that China is a “communist-led state.”
Politico uses the term “red scare” to suggest that the problem is being greatly exaggerated.
If there is any doubt about the “red” in Red China, consider the Chinese Constitution, which declares, “The People’s Republic of China is a socialist state under the people’s democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants. The socialist system is the basic system of the People’s Republic of China. Sabotage of the socialist system by any organization or individual is prohibited.”
Mao Zedong, considered by many the greatest mass murderer in history, ispictured on the Chinese currency.
After Politico went to press with its defense of Beijing, the Los Angeles Timesreported that “Foreign spy services, especially in China and Russia, are aggressively aggregating and cross-indexing hacked U.S. computer databases—including security clearance applications, airline records and medical insurance forms—to identify U.S. intelligence officers and agents, U.S. officials said.” The Times added, “At least one clandestine network of American engineers and scientists who provide technical assistance to U.S. undercover operatives and agents overseas has been compromised as a result, according to two U.S. officials.”
Politico reported that criticism of China “might lead Chinese leaders to cozy up to another world power instead, like Russia (another favorite GOP boogeyman), the former ambassador said.”
This former ambassador is Jon Huntsman, the “moderate” Republican who served as Obama’s Ambassador to China. He ran for president in 2012, dropped out, and threw his “support” behind Mitt Romney, who lost a race he should have won.
Later in the article, Politico refers to China’s “alleged” cyberattacks.
“U.S. officials have not publicly blamed Beijing for the theft of the OPM and the Anthem files, but privately say both hacks were traced to the Chinese government,” reported the Los Angeles Times. “The officials say China’s state security officials tapped criminal hackers to steal the files, and then gave them to private Chinese software companies to help analyze and link the information together. That kept the government’s direct fingerprints off the heist and the data aggregation that followed. In a similar fashion, officials say, Russia’s powerful Federal Security Service, or FSB, has close connections to programmers and criminal hacking rings in Russia and has used them in a relentless series of cyberattacks.”
Why is there such a determination by a well-read publication like Politico to play down threats from China and Russia? This article is a case study in Republican-bashing. Politico is trying to warn Republicans running for president not to follow Donald Trump’s lead in focusing on how foreign countries are taking advantage of the United States.
The article by Nahal Toosi says that “…while scapegoating Beijing and its questionable economic policies may seem like an appealing campaign tactic, China specialists—including many in the GOP—warn that Republicans run the risk of looking ignorant about U.S.-Chinese ties.”
The ignorance comes from those in politics and the media who play down the nature of the communist regime.
The author goes on to warn against “bullying” or “isolating” the world’s “most populous country.”
“To be fair,” she writes, “China gives White House hopefuls lots of material for a tough-guy routine. Beijing’s aggressive moves in the South China Sea, its suspected role in cyberattacks on the U.S. and its dismal human rights record are just a few areas already seized upon by Republicans (and some Democrats) for criticism. China’s currency policies have long frustrated the United States in particular, and its increased military spending has led to wariness around the world.”
Notice how “alleged” cyberattacks have become “suspected.”
But in order to “be fair” to Republicans, she grudgingly admits some “questionable” Chinese policies that give the GOP candidates enough material to appear “tough.”
This is a despicable whitewash of a communist regime that is clearly waging war on the U.S.
“Potential enemies of the United States have claimed that they have the ability to crash our markets and our former head of NSA acknowledged that they do have that capability,” notes Kevin Freeman, author of Secret Weapon: How Economic Terrorism Brought Down the U.S. Stock Market and Why It can Happen Again.He notes that the Dow Jones Industrial Average crashed by more than 1,000 points at the open on August 24 “after China accused us of crashing their market.” He says that China has published a book, Unrestricted Warfare, calling a stock market crash a “new-era weapon.”
Instead of holding the Obama Administration accountable for safeguarding our national security information, Politico attacks Republicans for being too critical of China.
Later in the article, Politico quotes some comments about why we have to take the time to understand that the rulers in Beijing will realize this is just campaign rhetoric. “Top U.S.-watchers in Beijing are pretty savvy,” says Melanie Hart, identified as “director for China policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.” It turns out she “worked on Qualcomm’s China business development team, where she provided technology market and regulatory analysis to guide Qualcomm operations in Greater China. She has worked as a China advisor for The Scowcroft Group, Albright Stonebridge Group, and the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.”
In other words, part of her career has been devoted to facilitating U.S. investment in China. She went to China in June to work on U.S.-China cooperation on “climate change” matters. She has a vested interest in making the communists look non-threatening.
Meanwhile, last January, a Russian spy ring was uncovered in New York City whose purpose in part was to “collect economic intelligence” and recruit New York City residents as intelligence sources. One of the targets of the economic intelligence gathering, a Justice Department press release said, was the New York Stock Exchange. The actual complaint filed against the Russians went into more detail, as they are shown discussing how to obtain information about the “destabilization” of U.S. financial markets.
So despite the wisdom conveyed by Jon Huntsman about forcing China into the arms of Russia, it looks like Russia and China are already working very well together.
Nevertheless, the first state visit by President Xi Jinping of China to the United States will take place in September.
Look for another Politico article about GOP “obstructionists” getting in the way of our blossoming relationship with the butchers of Beijing.
By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media
The nation is fiercely debating the Iran nuclear deal and the significance of the Ayatollah’s “death to America” tweets when the real problem is Iran’s sponsor, Russia, and its lunatic ruler, Vladimir Putin. By controlling the media, killing off the opposition, and smearing Ukrainian freedom fighters as Nazis, the former KGB colonel has his country worked into a collective frenzy over a concocted Western threat. Some experts believe Russia is preparing for nuclear war on a global scale. If Putin carries out his threats, America is no more.
In this case, the U.S. is facing not only a nuclear weapons program, which is the case with Iran, but what our top generals are calling an “existential threat” to our survival as a nation.
As the National Institute for Public Policy documents in the report, “Foreign Nuclear Developments: A Gathering Storm,” Russia has a new military doctrine that anticipates using nuclear weapons, and the regime has embarked on “a massive strategic modernization program to deploy new nuclear weapons and delivery systems.”
Not only that, but Russia has a ballistic missile defense to use against us.
Geopolitical analyst Jeff Nyquist tells Accuracy in Media, “The Russians became angry and threatening when NATO tried to build a very modest missile defense system to stop an Iranian missile. Yet Russia has over 10,000 dual purpose SAM/ABMs for defense against our missiles and will be deploying a new ABM prototype next year.”
He adds, “Russia has potential war winning advantages over the U.S. and NATO—not necessarily in the number of nuclear weapons but in the number of its ABM batteries, and the upgrading of these batteries with a new generation of interceptor rockets while the American side makes no effort in this direction. The U.S. ABMs in Alaska and California would be lucky to stop 12 Russian warheads.”
Despite the preoccupation with Iran’s nuclear program, Iran currently has nothing of that nature which can threaten the homeland of the United States. Yet, Russia can obliterate the United States, a fact that has been highlighted recently by no less than three top American generals. The term, “existential threat,” has been used repeatedly to describe the Russian challenge. That term means the Russians can destroy the United States as a nation.
Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, nominated to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I’d have to point to Russia.”
His statement, made during his Senate confirmation hearing on July 9, got a significant amount of media attention. Similar warnings came from Army General Mark A. Milley, commander of U.S. Forces Command, who has been nominated to become the next Army chief of staff, and Air Force General Paul Selva, nominated to become Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
Dunford and the other generals acknowledge the real or potential nuclear threats from Iran, North Korea, and China. But it’s Russia that is deemed an “existential threat.” It is the most significant.
Some conservatives have been complaining that patriotic military officers are being purged from the Armed Forces. Well, it appears that the purge missed Generals Dunford, Milley, and Selva. These generals are taking a risk by going against the conventional wisdom of the Obama administration. Indeed, the White House and the State Department have gone out of their way to say that the Obama administration does not agree with the assessment that Russia is an existential threat to the United States.
For the generals to go public in this manner—and to contradict the official stance of the Obama administration—suggests that the threat from Russia is very real indeed, and may be more serious than they are willing to publicly acknowledge.
When you consider how the Iran nuclear deal came about, you begin to realize how serious it is. Obama actually thanked Putin for bringing it about.
The CNN story, “Obama, Putin congratulate each other for Iran deal,” demonstrates the nature of the problem. Although the story is designed to highlight the alleged positive roles Obama and Putin played in the deal, CNN reported that in a readout of the conversation between the two leaders, “the White House said Obama thanked Putin for Russia’s role in the Iran nuclear negotiations.”
Thanked Putin? This demonstrates something worse than the deal itself and the real nature of the Iranian threat. Putin should thank Obama because the U.S. is helping Iran, Russia’s client state, get tens of billions of dollars in international financial aid. Down the line, Russia gets U.S. approval to supply more weapons to the anti-American regime.
Iran is certainly a potential nuclear threat to Israel, the so-called “little Satan.” But the U.S. is the “Great Satan,” and our biggest nuclear threat at the current time is Russia, as our top military officers have said. Yet, Obama is treating Putin as an ally.
Israel and its defenders have to come to grips with the fact that Iran is a threat to the Jewish state, the region, and the world because of its Russian sponsorship. Iran can’t be viewed in isolation, apart from Russia. Indeed, Iran is considered to be part of a “strategic alliance” with Russia.
As we have noted on several occasions, the Iranian Ayatollah, Ali Khamenei, is KGB-trained, having been “educated” at the KGB’s Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. This means he is under Russian influence, if not an agent.
Obama has a blind spot regarding threats from the Islamic world, and that includes Iran. But his unwillingness to face up to the Russian threat, which is more serious than any on the face of the earth today, puts the very existence of the United States in jeopardy.
Remember that Obama mocked Mitt Romney’s statement during the 2012 campaign that Russia was our geopolitical adversary. Obama hasn’t learned anything, despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He keeps refusing to supply Ukraine with heavy weapons to defend themselves. Praising the Russians for their role in the Iran deal signals something worse than just incompetence. It appears that Russia is exercising some sort of control over the Obama administration.
We got a taste of that control when it was reported that, on Independence Day, the Kremlin announced that Putin had sent Happy July 4th greetings to Obama. We only later learned that Putin, on the same day, had also sent nuclear-capable Russian bombers off the coast of California that had to be intercepted by American aircraft.
This duplicity is another sign of the lunatic mindset of the former KGB spy running the show in Moscow. This nuclear blackmail is much more serious than a tweet from the Iranian Ayatollah showing Obama with a gun to his head. Putin has a nuclear gun pointed at America and we have practically no defense against it.
By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media
A new survey from Univision, the pro-Mexico television network, demonstrates the utter folly of Republicans appealing to Hispanic voters. It finds that 68 percent have a favorable view of Hillary Clinton despite the scandals swirling around her. By contrast, only 36 percent have a favorable view of former Republican Governor Jeb Bush, who is married to a Mexican and speaks Spanish.
Bush “was the highest-rated of all the Republican candidates,” Univision reports, with Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), a one-time proponent of amnesty for illegals, coming in second with only a 35 percent approval rate.
What the poll demonstrates is that Hispanics are basically owned by the Democratic Party. The Democrats’ power grab for the Latino vote has been successful. However, ultimately the Democratic Party’s success in the presidential election depends on convincing Republicans to fruitlessly continue to appeal to Hispanics, while abandoning the GOP voter base of whites, conservatives and Christians.
Overall, in terms of political party affiliation, 57 percent of Hispanics identified themselves as Democrats and only 18 percent said they are Republicans. A total of 25 percent called themselves independent.
In another finding, 59 percent of Hispanic voters said they were satisfied with Barack Obama’s presidency after his six years in office. Clearly, most Hispanics have drunk the Kool-Aid. For them, it appears that federal benefits and legalization of border crossers are what matters. Most of them don’t bat an eye in regard to Obama’s lawless and traitorous conduct of domestic and foreign policy.
What the Republicans have left is to try to appeal to white, conservative and Christian voters. But that strategy, of course, runs the obvious risk of being depicted by the liberal media as racist. After all, whites are not supposed to have a “white identity,” as Jared Taylor’s book by that name describes.
Whites cannot have a racial identity, but Hispanics and blacks can. This is one aspect of political correctness. As communists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who are themselves white, put it in their book, it is a “race course against white supremacy.”
If Republicans pander to Hispanics, they will alienate their voter base, which has shown in their reaction to the Donald Trump candidacy that they want more—not less—action taken to control the border with Mexico. Republican Senator John McCain (AZ) calls the Trump supporters “crazies,” an indication that the GOP establishment would rather jettison these people than bring them into the Republican camp. Like McCain, former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has also attacked Trump, saying his remarks about criminal aliens are hurting the GOP. It’s amazing how a loser like Romney, who also threw in the towel on gay marriage when he was governor of Massachusetts, continues to generate press. What he is saying is what the liberal media want to hear.
Of course, the political correctness which dominates the national dialogue and debate also means that Republicans like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio are likely to continue to demonize Trump, thereby alienating many whites. As a result, the Republicans will get less of the conservative and Christian vote, further diminishing their chances of winning the White House. It will be a replay of the losing campaigns of John McCain and Mitt Romney. Republicans have already alienated many Christian voters by giving up the fight for traditional marriage. They had planned to abandon border control as an issue until Trump and “El Chapo” got in the way.
Meanwhile, in another amazing turnaround, Republicans on Capitol Hill are backing Obama’s call for “sentencing reform,” a strategy that will empty the prisons and increase the crime rate, thereby alienating GOP voters in favor of law and order.
As this scenario plays out, Mrs. Clinton is coming across on the Democratic side looking like a moderate, by virtue of the fact that an open socialist, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), is running “to her left” for the Democratic nomination.
The Clinton-Sanders show has all the earmarks of a carefully staged demonstration of the Marxist dialectic, an exercise designed to create the appearance of conflict in order to force even more radical change on the American people through Democratic Party rule.
Anybody who knows anything about Hillary, a student of Saul Alinsky, understands that her “moderation” is only a façade. Her thesis on Alinsky for Wellesley College was titled “There Is Only the Fight…” That is the Marxist strategy. It is the Alinsky version of the Marxist dialectic. It was also adopted by Obama, who was trained by Alinsky disciples working with the Catholic Church in Chicago.
In my column, “Study Marxism to Understand Hillary,” I noted that Barbara Olson had come to the conclusion while researching her book on Hillary that “she has a political ideology that has its roots in Marxism.” Olson noted, “In her formative years, Marxism was a very important part of her ideology…”
This means that Mrs. Clinton understands that the Sanders candidacy actually supports and does not undermine her own candidacy. It makes Hillary look like a moderate while she moves further to the left, a place she wants to be, in response to the left-wing Democratic base. Only the Marxist insiders seem to understand what is happening.
Some uninformed commentators refer to something called “Clintonism,” a supposed moderate brand of Democratic Party politics. If that ever existed, it applied to Bill Clinton and not Hillary.
The fact is that Sanders and Mrs. Clinton have associated with the same gang of communists and fellow travelers for many years. Sanders was an active collaborator with the Communist Party-sponsored U.S. Peace Council.
As for Hillary, Barbara Olson reported in her book Hell to Pay that Robert Borosage, who served as director of the Marxist Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), was “a colleague and close acquaintance” of Clinton. Olson wrote that Mrs. Clinton operated in the “reaches of the left including Robert Treuhaft and Jessica Mitford,” who had been “committed Communists” and “Stalinists.” Olson said that Hillary worked for Treuhaft and paved the way for Mitford to lobby then-Governor Bill Clinton on the death penalty issue.
Olson described Hillary as a “budding Leninist” who understood the Leninist concept of acquiring, accumulating and maintaining political power at any cost. She wrote that “Hillary has never repudiated her connection with the Communist movement in America or explained her relationship with two of its leading adherents. Of course, no one has pursued these questions with Hillary. She has shown that she will not answer hard questions about her past, and she has learned that she does not need to—remarkable in an age when political figures are allowed such little privacy.”
Researcher Carl Teichrib has provided me with a photo of a Hillary meeting with Cora Weiss from the May 2000 edition of “Peace Matters,” the newsletter of the Hague Appeal for Peace. Weiss, a major figure in the Institute for Policy Studies, gained notoriety for organizing anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and traveling to Hanoi to meet with communist leaders. In the photo, Hillary is shown fawning over a Hague Appeal for Peace gold logo pin that Weiss is wearing.
Teichrib, editor of Forcing Change, recalls being an observer at the 1999 World Federalist Association (WFA) conference, held in association with the Hague Appeal for Peace, during which everyone in attendance was given an honorary membership into the WFA. In addition to collaborating with the pro-Hanoi Hague Appeal for Peace, the WFA staged a “Mission to Moscow” and held several meetings with the Soviet Peace Committee for the purpose of “discussing the goal of general and complete disarmament” and “the strengthening of the United Nations.” Mrs. Clinton spoke to a WFA conference in a tribute to veteran newsman Walter Cronkite, a supporter of world government
In the WFA booklet, “The Genius of Federation: Why World Federation is the Answer to Global Problems,” the group described how a “world federation,” a euphemism for world government, could be achieved by advancing “step by step toward global governance,” mostly by enhancing the power and authority of U.N. agencies.
Obama’s Iran deal continues this strategy by placing enormous power in the hands of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency.
At this stage in the campaign, even before the first Republican presidential debate, we can already see how the race is playing out. Hillary is counting on the Republicans nominating another loser with a losing strategy while she moves to the left and looks like a moderate.
Alinsky would be proud.
By: Arlen Williams
Gulag Bound
Dick Morris’ past is checkered. Not having scoured his autobiographical works, I would hope he’s admitted that and, being a master at public relations, has not attempted to defend his former life as a chief political advisor to Bill Clinton.
So… everybody past that?
Good.
Currently, he’s not perfect, but I listen to him often for some of the most clear-eyed political analyses (and anti-globalist, anti-pseudo-elitist perspectives) of the more conventional pundits.
I suggest hearing this, which (after the rather piercing fanfare — okay, he could use some equalizing on the audio) begins…
When, last week, Jeb Bush said the solution to income inequality, or one solution, was for Americans to work longer hours, he wasn’t just committing a flub. He was showing his fundamental lack of understanding of what’s going on in America with the American worker. It was a mistake born of his elitism and his wealth, just as much as Mitt Romney’s “47%” line was — and the results could be just as catastrophic, if he ever gets the Republican nomination to run for president.
Listen to the rest here, and catch Bush’s ominously telling lost opportunity to nail Obamacare for its destruction of full-time work. (We are not granted an embed of his brief comments.)
Of course that doesn’t mean a Jeb Bush presidency would not be “just as catastrophic.”
The usually brilliant and stalwart Kevin D. Williamson of National Review appears at last to have fallen victim to the virus known as Beltway Insider-itis. In doing so, he joins the likes of David Brooks and Jen Rubin, so-called “conservatives” who act as the unofficial PR wing of the Chamber of Commerce, Karl Rove, and the Republican National Committee.
We fully expect the Left to tar Constitutional Conservatives and Tea Party activists as racists (no matter their love and support of Allen West, Ben Carson, Tim Scott, Ted Cruz, Israel, et. al.); most recently the progressive sissy-boy (which is the term he prefers, I hear) Damon Linker of The Week labeled the conservative base a bunch of Birchers who hate, among others, “negroes, elites, decadent city folk, Catholics [and] Jews”.
We do not expect the likes of Williamson, however, to channel Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Karl Rove and Tom Donohue and slam the very group of Americans who handed the Republican Party massive midterm wins at every level of government in 2010 and 2014.
Thus, it was with great surprise that I read Williamson’s latest (“WHINOS: On the Martyrdom of the Holy, Holy Base“), a full-throated attack on you and I, who he terms “WHINOS”.
Never mind the Democrats, economic realities, Putin, ISIS, the geographical facts of the U.S.-Mexico border — all would be well and all manner of things would be well if not for the behind-the-scenes plotting of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and their enablers, who apparently can be bribed with small numbers of cocktail weenies. The WHINO is a Republican conspiracy theorist, in whose fervid imaginings all the players — victims, villains — are Republicans.
Why the vitriol (and patently false vitriol at that)?
Williamson, like many Beltway insiders, has panicked at the latest polls showing Donald Trump (no, not Donald Trump!) atop the current GOP field.
Recall, however, that at this same moment in the prior election cycle, Rudy Giuliani sat in Trump’s position.
Williamson also insists Romney was a wonderful candidate and anyone who couldn’t see the difference between the former Massachusetts governor and Obama was either a “fanatic or extraordinarily ill-informed”. Or perhaps nominating the Godfather of Obamacare made the dominant policy issue of 2012 a moot point?
And why do I call Williamson’s insipid arguments patently false?
He need look no further than his own website to read the sobering wisdom of Andrew C. McCarthy (“Republicans Have Needlessly Undermined their Ability to Resist the Iran Deal”), which effectively shreds every last molecule of Williamson’s diatribe.
In fact, on the most important national security question in possibly all of American history, the Obama-Kerry nuclear Iran agreement (McCarthy terms it “a disastrous deal that would end sanctions against the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism while paving its way to a nuclear-weapons arsenal”), John Boehner and Mitch McConnell conspired with Barack Obama to simply cede Congressional oversight of a deal that will reward Iran with $150 billion and allow it (easily) to build nuclear weapons.
That legislation … enacted as the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, shifts the burden of persuasion away from President Obama and onto opponents of the Iran deal, thus making the deal virtually impossible to stop or undo…
…Iran, of course, is not just an accused party; it is an incorrigible recidivist. In overt contempt for our nation and president, Tehran is already in flagrant violation of the “Joint Plan of Action” it agreed to with the administration. The mullahs see that, even as they systematically flout this interim deal, Obama is hell-bent on looking the other way. It is therefore certain that they will violate the final deal — which will be so frontloaded with carrots (e.g., a $150 billion signing bonus in the form of immediate sanctions relief) that the sticks can be laughed off…
…Under the Constitution, the president must persuade a two-thirds supermajority of senators to approve an agreement with a foreign power. That is, as I’ve repeatedly contended in connection with the Iran negotiations, the Constitution’s presumption is against legally binding international pacts…
…Under the Constitution’s burden of persuasion, then, the Iran deal did not have a prayer of becoming law … In the final Iran deal, the burden of persuasion is key. Enter the Corker legislation. It undermined the Constitution’s presumption against international agreements by shifting the burden of persuasion: Rather than forcing the president to persuade two-thirds of the Senate to approve the deal, it imposes on opponents the burden of persuading two-thirds of the full Congress to reject it.
In other words, the Corker bill (and, remember, Bob Corker is simply a puppet of Mitch McConnell in this and many other matters) surrendered full control of the most dangerous deal imaginable — handing cash and nuclear weapons to a terror state whose unofficial slogan is “Death to America” — to Barack Hussein Obama.
I don’t know whether McCarthy wrote his piece as a direct assault on Williamson, but suffice it to say that it appears purpose-built.
Williamson must also ignore the fact that, in order to get elected, men like Boehner and McConnell pledged fiscal responsibility, a full repeal of Obamacare, and investigations of Barack Obama’s high crimes and misdemeanors.
In fact, a Republican Congress has aided and abetted the most massive expansion of government since World War II; an act of fiscal irresponsibility so unhinged and detrimental to society that Mark Levin’s new book on the topic (Plunder and Deceit) is already a #1 bestseller weeks before it hits the shelves.
In fact, a Republican Congress has done nothing of import to repeal the disastrous Obamacare law, even as the Supreme Court and the Department of Health and Human Services rewrites it at will.
In fact, a Republican Congress has failed to name a Select Committee to investigate the weaponization of the IRS (the mere suggestion of which was outlined in Richard Nixon’s prospective articles of impeachment); it has permitted Hillary Clinton to destroy her government records that were under subpoena with virtually no repercussions; and it has failed to diligently pursue any one of dozens of other scandals (e.g., Fast and Furious, Solyndra, the UAW bailout, the violation of the War Powers Act, etc.) that should be front and center every single day.
Is it any wonder that the conservative base is frothing at the mouth?
Williamson concludes with the pithy phrase “[w]hining is no substitute for winning”; unfortunately his beloved Establishment has done very little winning, whether in general elections or on the most important policy questions of the day.
In order to win, Kevin, you have to fight.
Feckless, cowardly boobs like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have surrendered at every opportunity without even considering a fight, insisting before the battle is even joined, for instance, that they’ll never shut down the government.
The American people need a Presidential candidate who will fight. Whether that man is Donald Trump or, more realistically, someone like Ted Cruz, Americans want a candidate who will not hesitate to face our enemies, whether they be foreign or domestic.
By: Renee Nal
New Zeal
Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry seems to have largely escaped the scrutiny recently directed toward Scott Walker for hiring establishment operative Brad Dayspring who aggressively lied about the Tea Party during the hotly contested Mississippi primary last year.
While Scott Walker, who this author has long suspected of as having establishment sympathies, has been appropriately getting heat for hiring a pro-Cochran thug, Rick Perry should also be called out for his “terrible hires,” including Henry Barbour (who previously worked for Perry), and should be “censured” and is “quite possibly the most despised campaign consultant in the entire conservative movement,” “McCain flunkie” Steve Schmidt (who believes that Sarah Palin “is filled with anger, has a divisive message”) and Austin Barbour (who also worked on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign) as senior adviser to three of Perry’s super PACs.
As reported at CNN Friday:
Two pro-Perry groups — Opportunity and Freedom PAC and Opportunity and Freedom PAC I — raised $12.8 million in the first half of the year. A third super PAC, which was created Thursday, collected a $4 million check from a single donor, bringing the full tally for the three groups to $16.8 million as of July 10, said Austin Barbour, the senior adviser to all three affiliated entities.
Last year, NBC reported that the pro-GOP establishment Barbour family had “palpable” anger toward Chris McDaniel, who threatened the establishment in Mississippi. In a nutshell, creepy Kate Cochran’s father Thad, through his evidently-coveted campaign staff, convinced black Democrats with robocalls and radio advertisements in the 2014 primary that the Tea Party is racist and would take away food stamps.
A pro-Cochran radio advertisement said in part,
“[B]y not voting, you are saying ‘take away all of my government programs, such as food stamps, early breakfast and lunch programs, millions of dollars to our black universities’…everything we and our families depend on that comes from Washington will be cut.”
A pro-Cochran robocall lamented:
“[I]f we do nothing, Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel wins and causes even more problems for President Obama.”
The conservative grassroots, i.e. those paying attention, universally recognize and abhor the words and deeds of the power-grabbing, Constitution-shredding establishment republicans. Just as one will never (ever) find these politically-savvy folks excited about the prospect of a Jeb Bush presidency; the patriot movement is also unified in their disdain for those who lied (also see here and here) to black voters in Mississippi in order to secure a primary victory for establishment incumbent Thad Cochran in 2014.
By: Kenneth Timmerman
Accuracy in Media
Exclusive to Accuracy in Media
The emails show more than you might think
On August 21, 2011, a top aide to Hillary Clinton penned a memo lauding his boss for steering U.S. policy in Libya, aimed at convincing the media of her accomplishments as Secretary of State.
“HRC has been a critical voice on Libya in administration deliberations, at NATO, and in contact group meetings—as well as the public face of the U.S. effort in Libya. She was instrumental in securing the authorization, building the coalition, and tightening the noose around Qadhafi and his regime,” Clinton aide Jake Sullivan wrote.
Sullivan’s memo to Mrs. Clinton’s inner circle is, of course, embarrassing today, which is one reason you are not reading about it on the front pages of The New York Times or The Washington Post.
But that’s not the only reason.
The memo, as well as other critical State Department correspondence, was withheld from multiple committees in Congress that have been investigating the September 11, 2012 attacks in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, State Department communications officer Sean Smith, and two former Navy Seals then working on contract to the CIA, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.
It finally surfaced on May 22, 2015, in response to a subpoena from the Select Committee on Benghazi chaired by South Carolina Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy. That was six months after Gowdy’s initial request to the State Department for all documents relating to Benghazi, and more than two-and-a-half years after a similar request from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which initiated its investigation into Benghazi just days after the attacks.
In Sullivan’s memo, Mrs. Clinton was the driving force in getting the Russians to drop opposition to a UN-imposed no fly zone on Qadhafi’s Libya. She alone got Turkey, Qatar and Jordan to join the coalition military operations and to provide critical support to the anti-Qadhafi forces.
To convince skeptical allies to embrace her policies, Sullivan noted that Mrs. Clinton had traveled to Paris, London, Berlin, Rome, Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa and Istanbul. She visited with “House Democrats and Senate Republicans to persuade them not to de-fund the Libya operation.”
Sullivan’s memo provided background for media appearances by Secretary Clinton in the ensuing months, including a famous encounter with a TV news reporter in Afghanistan, just three days after Mrs. Clinton’s October 2011 visit to Libya to proclaim victory against the then-still-missing Libyan dictator.
In video outtakes, Clinton aide Huma Abedin hands the Secretary a Blackberry, with information that Colonel Qadhafi has been killed, apparently just hours after Mrs. Clinton’s brief visit to the country.
“We came, we saw, he died,” Mrs. Clinton joked.
In short, without Mrs. Clinton’s vigorous intervention, Qadhafi would still be in power, Libya would still be a country, and the jihadis who now own the place would be toast. And, of course, Chris Stevens, Smith, Doherty and Woods would still be alive.
After the attacks, Mrs. Clinton quickly forgot her leading role on Libya, sending a clueless Susan Rice to the Sunday talk shows to be the “public face” of the Obama administration’s Libya policy.
In her only public appearances to address what happened in Benghazi, she portrayed herself as a disengaged onlooker, called upon to pick up the pieces when the hired help failed to get things right. “[It] was very disappointing to me that the [Accountability Review Board (ARB)] concluded there were inadequacies and problems in the responsiveness of our team here in Washington to the security requests that were made by our team in Libya. And I was not aware of that going on. It was not brought to my attention,” she told the House Foreign Affairs committee in January 2013.
She reminded House and Senate panels in January 2013 that the State Department’s ARB, which she appointed, had determined that the failures in Benghazi were entirely the responsibility of lower level officials, even though Libya was among the top ten most dangerous postings in the world at the time of the attacks. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler busily helped to reinforce that fiction in a “fact-checking” blog aimed to show that there were simply too many cables going in and out of the State Department for a busy Secretary to see all of them.
Interestingly, in the approximately 300 Clinton emails the State Department has released so far, there is no record of Mrs. Clinton’s original request to her staff to draft a memo lauding her achievements in Libya. Did Sullivan simply dream up the idea and forward it up the chain of command to see if it would please his boss? Or was Mrs. Clinton’s request for these talking points one of the 30,000 “personal” emails the former Secretary of State deleted as irrelevant to her official duties?
Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff Cheryl Mills forwarded Sullivan’s August 2011 memo to a second private Hillary email address. Remember how she insisted that she had just one private email account? The memo included a note that said, “Here’s the memo.” That sounds an awful lot like, “Here’s the memo you requested.”
Hillary sent it on to her personal assistant with the instruction, “Pls print for me.”
This type of exchange gets repeated many times in the Clinton emails released so far, suggesting that Mrs. Clinton was not given to making substantive comments via email, or that she deleted material that is relevant to the House Select Committee on Benghazi and is therefore guilty of obstructing justice. The other possibility is that the State Department Freedom of Information office is inexplicably dragging its feet in clearing Mrs. Clinton’s correspondence, even though the delay casts Mrs. Clinton in an embarrassing light.
Judicial Watch and other watchdog organizations—including this author—had been trying to get Mrs. Clinton’s emails and other U.S. government documents relevant to the Benghazi attacks for the past two-and-a-half years without success until the subpoena from the Select Committee on Benghazi compelled a response.
Now, thanks to a federal court order in Washington, DC, compelling the State Department to produce additional documents it previously had said did not exist or were properly categorized as classified, we can now put Mrs. Clinton’s emails into a broader context.
As the first reports of the attacks on Benghazi were whizzing through the State Department Operations Center, bouncing off the computers of lower level employees, one is impressed by their professionalism.
For example, the British security firm that had the contract to guard the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi sent several ungrammatical missives through a State Department contact to update him on what was happening during the attacks.
Dylan Davies, one of the contractors working for the security firm, was apparently holed up in his hotel room (not at the scene of the Compound leading a daring rescue attempt, as he told CBS’ 60 Minutes), with no information at 11:55 p.m. local time—by which time, Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith were dead, the CIA contractors led by Ty Woods had driven the attackers away from the burning diplomatic compound, and evacuated back to the CIA Annex.
A half hour later, Davies sent a second report, claiming there had been “no casualties,” and relaying a hearsay report from his “Benghazi facilitator,” who claimed that sources on the street were telling him the attack was either a September 11th anniversary attack, or caused by an Internet movie “disrespecting Mohammed.”
In relaying those reports, the State Department’s Command Center cautioned that they should be “taken with a grain of salt as the Employee may not be aware of the extent of the situation.”
And yet, less than four hours later—with no other independent reporting that had been released—Hillary Clinton issued her statement blaming the attacks on an Internet video.
What happened in the meantime? Who pushed the idea of the Internet video?
The short answer is that:we still don’t know. Either Mrs. Clinton destroyed the emails and other documents showing how she latched onto a report her own specialists had rejected as hearsay, or perhaps the Archangel Gabriel whispered in her ear while she had her head in a closet in her 7th floor office suite.
Several emails released to Judicial Watch show the intense involvement of the Bureau of Public Affairs in scouring the Internet for information on the attacks, but nothing to suggest the Secretary of State was asking the intelligence community what they knew.
At 9:30 p.m,—just 40 minutes before Mrs. Clinton issued her official statement blaming the attacks on a YouTube video—Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Dana Shell Smith sent out a request to her reporting officers to find information “in the aftermath of today’s demonstrations at Embassy Cairo.” For whatever reason, her request failed to mention Benghazi.
Rebecca Brown Thompson, head of a State Department media office called the “Rapid Response Unit” (reminiscent of the Clinton campaign “war room”), responded by sending snippets from Facebook postings gleaned by Arabic language media analysts.
“I see a variety of responses spanning from conspiracy theories (that is what the Americans and Israelis are doing on purpose to hurt Arabs and Muslims, they financed the offensive movie), to those who condemn the attacks as ‘UnIslamic and barbaric,’” one analyst reported.
Two hours after Mrs. Clinton issued the statement blaming the attacks on the “inflammatory material posted on the Internet,” a second Arabic media analyst tasked with justifying that statement found a lone tweet about the film, but also reported that “some Twitter users in Libya and Egypt are spreading reports that the attacks in Libya may not be related to the infamous film but to the killing of Al Qaeda’s second in command, who is Libyan.”
The “infamous” film, which was much less well known in Libya than in Egypt, became the subject of a scurrilous account appearing the very next morning that was penned by Max Blumenthal, son of the infamous Sid “Vicious” Blumenthal who was advising Mrs. Clinton. It was picked up and amplified in a second attack blog posted at 6:56 a.m. the same morning, suggesting that the real blame for the attacks in Cairo and Benghazi fell on Mitt Romney and his “extremist” backers who produced this YouTube video in the first place.
Once information from the professionals rose to the level of Jake Sullivan, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills in Clinton’s office, it just seemed to disappear, replaced with a weird concoction of politics, public relations and outright fantasy, such as the YouTube video concoction or the Sid Blumenthal “intelligence” reports. (When Mrs. Clinton sent those around to the professional diplomats, the comments she received in response were rarely complimentary.)
The 300 recently released Clinton emails give the impression that the 7th floor of the State Department was inhabited by a bunch of grad students, pretending to be government officials.
The most tragic example of the apparent ignorance of how the State Department and the federal government actually worked appeared in Mrs. Clinton’s order to not engage the Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST), an interagency team on 24/7 stand-by alert, that had been created to respond to just such an emergency as the Benghazi attacks.
Counterterrorism Bureau official Mark Thompson, who helped to establish the FEST after the 1998 Africa embassy attacks, testified at length before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about this on May 8, 2013.
The Judicial Watch emails include a frustrated note he sent to the State Department Operations Center at 9:01 p.m. on the night of the attacks, complaining that Secretary Clinton was trying to get the FBI to send an evidence response team to Libya, when “the State (CT) led Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST) would include those folks, along with experts from other agencies. We should avoid multiple requests for assistance and rely on the comprehensive FEST approach.”
In his Congressional testimony, Thompson said he had tried to get Mrs. Clinton’s office and the White House to approve activating the FEST as soon as he first learned about the attacks from the State Operations Center, but was told “it was not the right time and it was not the team that needed to go right then.”
The redacted portions of Thompson’s email undoubtedly included a reference to the heavily-armed special operations component of the FEST whose job would be to secure the facility under attack. Had Secretary Clinton not told the FEST to stand down early on, there’s a chance they might have arrived in Benghazi before Woods and Doherty were killed in the 5 a.m. mortar attack the next morning.
At the very least, they would have been able to secure the compounds and gather evidence on the spot, instead of waiting three weeks as the FBI was ultimately forced to do.
Mrs. Clinton’s aversion to any overt U.S. military presence in Libya was well-known at U.S. Africa Command, which had been supplying the ambassador’s security detail up until just weeks before the attacks. “We were not allowed to wear uniforms outside the embassy compound, not even our boots,” the head of Stevens’ U.S. Special Forces security detail told me. “People high up at State resented like Hell us being there and doing what we did.”
And in the end, those same people ordered the Ambassador’s Special Forces security detail to leave Libya—with disastrous consequences.